Will your job still be there……?

In a normal year come Labour Day all l have on my mind is my tomatoes and how many bushels will l get this year, and will it be a good crop. Depending on where your kids are in their development, getting them back to school is the other priority.

Labour Day also is the kickoff of many cycles, especially in the political arena and most campaigns get going this week with a road map to an election or a readiness plan.

The United States or the Trump/Biden election for the next US president is set for November 3, 2020 and these results will be a very important one that will affect us here in Canada.

You may ask why?

I will give you more of my thoughts on this election and a couple of other upcoming important bench mark events to keep an eye on later on in this column, but first l have to give you my sense of where things are and where they may be going….

While l was writing this column and preparing my thoughts with this roll out, l feel like l am in a cloud or using a sports analogy, in a bubble. Many things that l keep doing… l have to stop and say to myself…am l doing the right thing? Don’t know about you, but l keep second guessing myself whether this is the correct way of doing things or is it incorrect…?

The covid-19 pandemic and the resulting economic recession have negatively affected many people’s mental health and created new barriers for people already suffering from mental illness and substance use disorders. As the pandemic wears on, ongoing and necessary public health measures expose many people to experiencing situations linked to poor mental health outcomes, such as isolation and job loss.

The initial response to covid-19 crisis was that local governments required closures of non-essential businesses and schools and declared mandatory stay-at-home orders for all but non-essential workers, which generally included prohibiting large gatherings, requiring quarantine for travelers, and encouraging social distancing.

All these new measures will dictate how people work together and how they gather for events and continue to work and play, especially if we get a second wave, and how effectively can we handle it.

The democratic and the republican convention by most accounts were performed virtually with no people present, except for Trump’s final speech that made people gathered to hear him speak. These two parties have demonstrated how moving forward may look like for many years to come. The virtual world is upon us and we have to embrace it for good or bad.

Canada is the United States biggest trading partner, it’s the largest economy in the world, and in a part of Canada that is so heavily dependent on technology and innovation that relies on trade relationships to reach its full potential. American leadership is especially important for those who live in close proximity to the Canadian-US border.

The job losses associated with covid-19 crisis highlight the need for Canada to prepare for unexpected shocks to the labour market and develop a workforce with skill that will be prized across a range of industries. Canadian workers and employers are facing unprecedented labour market disruptions heightened by covid-19 pandemic. We need to gain new insights on how workers transition to new jobs or industries and discover employer-led solutions to address the skills gap. Innovative approaches will help Canadians now and in the future by providing the tools needed to re-establish a stable workforce and support economic recovery.

Economic recovery powered by people leveraging AI and technological advancement, along with training and reskilling and adopting within industries facing chronic skills shortages are just some of the things we need to do in our workplaces.

In many cases, politics and business seem to go hand in hand and they must work together to stay ahead of an ever-changing world. Now…there’s that dirty word of “Politics” if you listen to the other side of the political story that China was losing all the jobs back to other countries and especially to North America and thus why the virus was started in China and spread throughout the world for China to get a restart on jobs.

Is this a plausible possibility or is it just a theory? I will have more to say on this topic in the coming months. As simple as this sounds….jobs have a major chain reaction to everything we do.

Thus, why the United States election come this fall is crucial and depending on who wins, the bring back jobs to North America may be impacted severely. The one positive covid-19 has done is that it made us realize as a society that we cannot rely on one country alone to give us that supply chain that we so urgently need on a daily basis. One good example is our pharmaceutical industry…did you know that 70% of all our drugs come from China?

Labour is the fuel that our economy, our society needs to exist as a strong nation. We need to be innovative and creative, but at the end of the day…its all about the jobs.

We must keep everything under consideration, especially in these turbulent day and days ahead to preserve and keep all our jobs and the men and women behind them safe and inspired.

Vincent Black/MS